Increasingly, people are relying on computers instead of physical books to gather information. Those who are well versed and practiced in the art of computerized searches tout their ability to complete projects without referring to a single, physical book. Though such claims may be a bit overblown, there can be no doubt that the trend is towards using more, not less, computerized searches as a part of projects and investigations.
Finding information is only the beginning, however. Once the information is found it must be read and understood. Depending on the subject matter under investigation, the person doing the search may need help in understanding the information found. Most commonly, people rely on “experts” to help them understand information. Broadly speaking, an expert is someone who has knowledge related to a given subject matter. Usually, but not always, experts tend to have a high degree of specialized knowledge in a given subject. As used throughout the discussion which follows, the term expert will mean a person who has acquired knowledge in a particular subject through formal education, work experience or life's experiences. The subject areas of expertise are not in any way limited to scientific or technical areas. To the contrary, almost everyone has an expertise in a given subject, be it technical, financial, administrative or otherwise. Similarly, a group of people will have a number of fields of expertise.
People who form businesses or enterprises can be said to share a collective “enterprise or client expertise”. All of the Web sites making up the Internet can be said to comprise publicly available (assuming the Web sites are open to the public) expertise.
Usually, if a person finds information and realizes she is in need of an expert, she will try to identify an expert using conventional means, such as by word-of-mouth, by reading physical expert directories, or by using companies who employ experts. As an alternative, experts can be identified electronically. There exists systems that purport to identify experts whose names reside in an electronic listing based on the concepts, context or content (collectively referred to hereafter as “concepts”) of search inquiries. In other words, these systems purport to track the electronic inquiries completed by someone who is in the middle of an Internet search, for example, and then upon request, will identify the names of experts who can best help interpret the information obtained by the search. Ultimately, however, it is desirable to do more than just identify an expert or experts. What is desired is to link the expert with the person involved in the search (hereafter referred to as “client” or “clients”) as fast as possible. Present systems and methods for identifying experts do not include ways to link identified experts to a client. The need to do so may sometimes be imperative. It may do no good to speak with an expert hours after he has been identified; if time is of the essence the expert must be contacted immediately by a client.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide methods and devices which link clients to experts.
It is still another object of the invention to provide for methods and devices for linking clients to experts who are selected based on matching concepts inherent in computerized search inquiries with the skills and knowledge of available experts.
Other objectives, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.